Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘banks’

A day without banks

Posted in News, tagged , , , , , on August 13, 2012 | 1 Comment »

It is 7am on a sunny Saturday morning in Copenhagen, Denmark. The MYC4 office is full of 25 volunteers ready for the day’s campaign which is intended to create awareness about the problem that 380 million adults don’t have access to a bank in Africa. The 25 volunteers are sent out in teams of two to cover the 100 ATMs in Copenhagen with a sign to close the bank. The idea with the sign was to give the bank customers the feeling of not having a bank. The feeling was of cause only temporary because upon closer inspection of the conspicuous ”CLOSED” sign on the machine, you could read that the bank wasn’t really closed and that there was talk of a fictional closure. The sign had the following text:

An efficient and stable banking system like Denmark’s is a necessity to operate a sustainable society. For more than 380 million adults in Africa not having access to a bank is the daily reality. You can help to change this at MYC4.com by lending out as little as €5 in a microloan.

Fortunately we are in Denmark, so the ATM machine works fine.

In connection with Saturday’s event Mads Kjær, CEO of MYC4, comments:

“In Denmark we have one of the world’s best banking systems which most of us take for granted. In Africa 380 million adults do not have access to a bank. We want to focus on the practical and financial implications this can have when trying to build a sustainable society and equip people to be able to stand on their own feet.”

He elaborates:

“By pretending this fictional closure of the Copenhagen ATMs, we want to plant a sense of what it is like not having a bank. Despite the fact that Africa is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, their banking system is not geared for this because the access to capital is not yet guaranteed. In a time where we donate billions of charity for Africa, it is a problem that we don’t focus enough on the missing middle.”

We were very happy to see how enthusiastic all our volunteers were about the project which went as expected; we had a lot of positive talk about MYC4 and the problem we wanted to communicate, furthermore we also ended up on the Danish news channel TV2 News. Watch the interview here.

Stay tuned for our viral video about the project “A day without banks”.

Read Full Post »

Mobile money in Africa – will it ever fly for real??

Posted in Tim's posts..., tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 14, 2011 | 4 Comments »

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I am currently working on a concept paper focusing on building a local Kenyan version of MYC4 – for Kenyan investors and Kenyan businesses only – http://www.myc4.co.ke

In my research for this paper I stumble upon a lot of interesting fora, blogs, articles, videos, books, etc. from which I extract and use as foundation when building the myc4.co.ke concept.

One of the articles on my have-read-list is rather thought-provoking and kind of conflicting with realizing local MYC4 platforms in African countries outside Kenya, which is why I want to share this with you here today.

It is about mobile money and why M-PESA actually succeeded in Kenya based on a loophole in the system. It is no secret that mobile money is a key building block in my jigsaw puzzle of offering Kenyan investors an attractive interest rate from lending to local businesses; if you want to offer the opportunity to invest as little as KES 10, well then mobile money is not just a key building component, it is an absolute necessity!!

There is not a business school with respect to themselves who have not had a case about M-PESA in their curriculum or who have sent researchers and classes to the streets of Nairobi to have on-gound-first-hand experience… it all looks very nice – on the surface that is! Ask yourself, why is it that mobile money has not mushroomed across Africa like a wild-fire?? Or said with the author of the article own words:

“In a continent where less than 20 percent of Africa’s population has a bank account and where latent demand for money services is so high, why are there no other success stories on the scale of Safaricom’s MPESA service, in Kenya?“

I have since been reading an extensive number of articles covering same ground and actually everybody (but the banks) seems to agree. It turns out that banks are RATHER scared of this fast-moving digital monster entering their arena (I understand why!!) and collaborate to challenge the existence of mobile money operators. It simply can’t be right that innovation and development of this kind is not allowed in this sector.

I am not voting for mobile money should be fully liberated regarding compliance and regulation, but when I read that M-PESA offered “bank-grade security and controls to its customers” upon the review that was made in 2009, I do see a runway for taking mobile money airborne.

Yes, the road of balancing between innovation and regulation is thin as ice, but please do not let old thinking of how a bank looks (steel and glass towers) be the guiding star – I mean with 80% unbanked it must be in (nearly) all’s interest to see mobile money implemented and obvious that new models are needed!!

Read Full Post »

Let’s remove the currency exposure (gutsy title for a post, I know, but I’ll stick to it)

Posted in Tim's posts..., tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 23, 2011 | 15 Comments »

Yesterday one of my colleagues (Githa) made me aware about this brilliant campaign where Kenyans are raising money to fellow Kenyans in serious need due to the disastrous drought that has hit Kenya and the neighboring East African countries. As Githa said, just coming back from our office in Africa, the campaign is visible everywhere in Nairobi…

As the logo states, the Kenyans for Kenya! campaign is inviting “everybody” to join the collection by setting the amount you can donate to as little as 10 Kenyan Shillings (EUR 0.07). Just for your information, 10 Kenyan Shillings enables to save a starving child from dying!

So far the campaign has raised more than EUR 2.5m in Kenya that is!! You can see the distribution of fund collection on their blog here as well as follow their general updates on the campaign.

I am not aware of like minded campaigns in developing countries and I sense a fresh wind blowing in this regard. I mean, collecting this level of funds from people (and businesses) in a poor country and in just a couple of weeks! That is simply mindblowing and truly inspiring…

Seen from a MYC4 perspective, we are very interested in following an initiative like this closely. Imagine you introduced a local MYC4 platform where Kenyans invest in Kenyans. The loans would be in local currency which would mean that investors would “by-pass” the currency exposure, which has proven to eliminate the positive return the last 1 1/2 year on MYC4. Net average result for MYC4 investors in Q2 2011 went from +3.3% before currency exposure to minus 0.9% after currency loss. You can read more in our Quarterly Portfolio Performance Update here.

If Kenyans are donating to people in need, what would then happen if you offered Kenyans to fund fellow Kenyan businesses and even get their funds repaid with an an interest rate – it could be the small shop down the street where you do you daily shopping, a mobile service developer operating several hundred kilometer away from you (still in Kenya though), or, or, or…

Should it be possible for people outside of Kenya to have an account on the Kenyan version of MYC4? Well, guess what I am focusing on currently???

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 107 other followers

%d bloggers like this: